Tweet Let’s face it: video chatting with someone is awkward. While we’ve all gotten used to darting our eyes between the camera and the screen, so there’s no real way to make eye contact with the person you’re talking with. But instead of cheating it out of politeness, a team of researchers has found a low-cost way to bring eye-contact into video chatting — using a Microsoft Kinect. Claudia Kuster,…

Tweet The New York Times continues the surveillance theme with a scoop about a project called Hemisphere, which involves the collection and long-term retention of phone metadata by AT&T in order to aid local and federal anti-drug law enforcement efforts. The length of the retention time (as much as 26 years) far outstrips anything the NSA is doing. It strikes me as notable that the biggest mass surveillance operations are…

Tweet There are few things that really capture the imagination as future-tech, and one of them is 3D communications. The ability to be in two places at once, with the aid of a 3D projection, evokes images from Star Wars but has remained largely out of reach. Now, Skype is ready to make it happen, according to a BBC report. Microsoft corporate vice-president for Skype Mark Gillett told BBC News that his division is working…

Tweet Skype officially launched on August 29th, 2003 and today, the VoIP service and its parent company Microsoft celebrate that date with a huge new infographic and a free WiFi access offer. Read more… Neowin

Tweet Microsoft has released an update for Skype on iOS and it brings with it 720P video calls and general bug fixes that will make the app run smoother on iOS 7 that will be released later this year. Read more… Neowin